2011 Movies so far

We are almost to September and about to enter the coveted Fall which will usher in the films studios release for awards consideration, i.e. Fall is when the good stuff comes out. But, many good films have come out thus far. Here is a look at the top 5:

5) Rise of the Planet of the Apes- Coming off the Tim Burton fiasco of 2001, I think most people had their doubts about this going in, but, man, were those doubts unfounded. Not only is this the best "Apes" film besides the original 1968 classic, it is an engrossing sci-fi film in its own right and a great origin story for kick-starting the series. Talk has been growing online as of late for Andy Serkis's performance as Caesar and whether or not a motion-capture performance should be nominated for an Oscar. If his Gollum should have been nominated, his Caesar overwhelmingly should. I'm ready for the sequel.

4) Crazy Stupid Love, Midnight in Paris- A tie here for two fantastic romantic comedies. "Crazy Stupid Love" affirms Steve Carell as one of my favorite actors, Emma Stone as someone to watch out for, and Marisa Tomei as someone I could watch read the phonebook. It's interconnectedness and somewhat at times strong schmaltzy and cheesy nature conjures "Love Actually", but this, actually, is better. "Midnight in Paris" is just plain fun. Woody Allen really has not made a movie this fun to watch since "Match Point" and it is a true celebration of the City of Lights. And in Owen Wilson, Allen has found an actor to play the "Woody Allen" character better than other actors in quite sometime.

3) Cave of Forgotten Dreams- I could listen to Werner Herzog narrate anything, but that wonderful voice would be nothing without a compelling story, and this latest Herzog documentary does not disappoint. Joining "Grizzly Man" and "Encounters at the End of the World", Herzog has crafted a documentary of natural awe and wonder. Exploring a cave in the south of France, Herzog presents to us the oldest known cave drawings in the history of the world. We wonder along with Herzog, as we descend into the cave: who made these drawings? what were their lives like? what did they dream? We wonder the answers as we wonder and explore through the cave with Herzog. Amazing stuff to see on the big screen.

2) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II- This could not have ended better. The series ends in grand fashion with one of its best entries. The standout is Alan Rickman, who adds depth, character, and, in a way, humanity to his portrayal of Snape. With "Part II", the "Harry Potter" films firmly stand alongside "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" as one of the greatest sagas in movie history.


1) Super 8- My favorite movie of the year so far. J.J. Abrams crafts a story of growing up and letting go of the past that echoes the greats of Steven Spielberg's filmography. Imagery in "Super 8" recalls "E.T.", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "Jurassic Park", "Jaws", and in the lead child actors, we are reminded of the kids in "The Goonies". Elle Fanning is the standout. As Alice, the lone girl in a group of middle schoolers looking to make an amateur zombie film only to become entagled in disasterous train wreck that sets loose a monster, Fanning is a presence on screen of a true star, an actress in whom when she is not on the screen, we wonder when she will return. It is great performance. The score by Michael Giacchino recalls the great music of John Williams in Spielberg's best. That score reaches its height in the final moments, when the lead characters of Joe, Alice, and their dads gaze at an ascent into the heavens. Joe, mourning the loss of his mother, is able to let go of the past and finally move on with his young life. It is a powerful moment and the best I have seen this summer. I will take the sentimentality and awe of "Super 8" over the dryness and over-ambitiousness of "The Tree of Life" any day of the week.

"Alice" shows wonder but fails to wow

Tim Burton must feel an affinity with social misfits and worlds which show a warped, off-balance presentation of setting and time. After all, this is the director who for over twenty-five years now has shown his distinctive view of a world he does not seem to understand through films which offer characters who do not fit in. Burton has done this with solely original works, like the Frankenstein-inspired Edward Scissorhands and his ode to cross-dressing B movie director Ed Wood, and with pre-existing stories onto which he puts his own “Burtonesque” spin. The latter has been his moviemaking sensibility as of late. In the past decade or so, Burton has tinkered or “re-imagined” numerous pop culture namesakes . Audiences have seen his view of the Headless Horsemen story with Sleepy Hollow, labored through his arduous Planet of the Apes rebirth, and wondered at the lavish, yet creepy candy factory owned by Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now, moviegoers are privy to his take on Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland.
As with his previous works, Alice in Wonderland presents Burton with the chance to yet again present a character who retreats from the social norms of the world in which they reside. Alice assumes that role here, joining Edward Scissorhands, Willy Wonka, and Ed Wood in Burton’s cast of the different. Here, though, Burton paints Alice in a different light from his other film leads. Alice is not odd to society because of her looks or actions, but because of her ideas. As the film opens, Alice, as a young lady of appropriate age residing in Victorian London, is expected to enter into marriage with a man for whom she has no feelings for no other reason than that is what she is supposed to do. This is not what Alice has in mind. Independent-minded, she stands athwart the social conventions of the time and questions why this has to happen to her. As hundreds of guests, her mother, and her groom-to-be await her marital decision at a lavish outdoor engagement party, Alice flees into the woods chasing a white rabbit that is lurking among the bushes. She winds up, however, falling down an endless hole and landing in the magically strange world of Underland.
Once in Underland, Alice encounters characters from Carroll’s book, and the 1951 classic Disney film, that audiences will recognize, such as the White Rabbit, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Cheshire Cat, and the Mad Hatter. All the characters inform Alice that as a child she once visited their land. Having no memory of the trip and believing the talking animals and dark world she is encountering to be a dream, Alice agrees to help them fulfill the reason the White Rabbit has lured her back to Underland: to defeat the Red Queen who viciously rules Underland by slaying a horrific dragon called the Jabberwocky.
Burton has a steady hand on creating a specific look and style for Alice in Wonderland. If Burton succeeds at anything as a filmmaker, it is crafting visually arresting films with a style that is uniquely his own. Always borrowing from the look of German Expressionism films, Burton molds Alice in Wonderland into a dark, brooding world lurking with fog, shadows, gloomy skies, buildings with crooked, off-centered architecture, and forests gleaming with strange happenings at every turn, like the Cheshire Cat dissolving into a green mist. Like Burton’s other films, this is a hauntingly beautiful movie to watch and is hypnotic because the screen constantly calls on the audience to marvel at the gorgeousness of the images Burton provides. Most of the film is computer generated but it is done well. The only qualm is that the film is shown in 3-D. Nothing is gained by projecting this movie in the 3-D format. It feels more gimmicky than anything else and only reflects a trend that is now coming from Hollywood because of the success of Avatar and that is that money is to be had from 3-D movies.
The actors also aid in making this a wonderment to watch. Newcomer Mia Wasikowska has a silent movie star quality to her, portraying much with her eyes and movements. She gives Alice a gentle, yet firm presence. She is young, but not naïve. Gentle, but not soft. This is the perfect balance for Burton’s view of Alice as an independent-minded young woman vexed by contemporary society who finds escape and a chance to make her own choices once she goes down the rabbit hole. The rest of the cast is a lineup of Burton regulars. As the Mad Hatter, who aids Alice in her quest to overthrow the Red Queen and kill the Jabberwocky, Johnny Depp maddeningly giggles and parades his way through a very animated performance. His pale white makeup, huge eyes, and puffy, orange hair resembles a manic clown. This is Depp and Burton’s seventh collaboration together and Depp’s performance here is probably the least captivating role of those films. There just is not much for Depp to do beyond acting peculiar, showing off some inane dancing, and offering nuggets of encouragement to Alice. Helena Bonham Carter, Burton’s real- life partner, is quite campy as the Red Queen. Her digitally enlarged head and Kabuki-like makeup certainly make it fun to watch her. Anne Hathaway as the White Queen does a good job acting serenely and Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts, the Red Queen’s chief henchman, is deliciously sinister. The rest of the cast is made up of British voice talent, including Michael Sheen as the White Rabbit, Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat and Christopher Lee as the Jabberwocky, all of whom do no disappoint.
For all the work Burton puts into making Alice in Wonderland visually stunning and character-rich, much more work should have been put into what happens to Alice once she tumbles into Underland. At first, there is excitement and a sense of apprehension emitting from the story as Alice meets the various characters who inhabit this strangely odd world. But instead of making a story that is as unconventional as the universe in which Alice finds herself, Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton go as conventional as they can and have the main crux of the story revolve around a heroine, in this case Alice, leading an army and destroying a giant monster. We have seen this before- in the Lord of the Rings, some of the Harry Potter films, and other contemporary fantasy works. Not that it does not work in Alice in Wonderland- it does. The film’s climax is well-executed, but at the same time we feel that Burton, knowing that this is his chance to put his own stamp on an existing story that is so weird and odd to begin with, should have done something that was a little different and not so average. Perhaps it is time for Burton to move on from this “re-imagining” phase he has been pursuing and get back to making more original films like Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood. Maybe this will give Burton the opportunity to pursue more uniquely original stories that fit his grasp for intriguing visuals and rich characters. Alice in Wonderland ultimately entertains but, like Alice questioning societal norms, it leaves the audience wondering if this is how it has to be.


Grade: B-

A List: The Best Films of the Decade

Everyone loves a list and everyone has their own lists. Accordingly, here is mine of the best movies of the last ten years (2000-2009). This is purely opinion and only consists of what I saw during that particular time period. And like all lists, it will probably change.


Let’s start with some Honorable Mentions:

Amelie (2001) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) by Andrew Dominik
Before Sunset (2004) by Richard Linklater
Gangs of New York (2002) by Martin Scorsese
The Hurt Locker (2009) by Kathryn Bigelow
Inglourious Basterds (2009) by Quentin Tarantino
Lost in Translation (2003) by Sofia Coppola
Michael Clayton (2007) by Tony Gilroy
Minority Report (2002) by Steven Spielberg
A Prairie Home Companion (2006) by Robert Altman
The Passion of the Christ (2004) by Mel Gibson
Punch-Drunk Love (2002) by Paul Thomas Anderson
A Serious Man (2009) by Joel and Ethan Coen
Sideways (2004) by Alexander Payne
Up In The Air (2009) by Jason Reitman


and the list…..


10) Traffic (2000) by Steven Soderbergh- Director Soderbergh won an Oscar for his inter-connecting story involving the different ways drugs have an effect on various aspects of modern society, from drug cartels and dealers to U.S. drug czars and addicted teenagers. This is a beautifully photographed movie with harrowing performances, especially by Benicio Del Toro as an honest Mexican cop torn with making morally right decisions.


9) The Departed (2006) by Martin Scorsese- He finally won his Oscar for this one and with The Departed, Scorsese presents a tale of rats and informants and a world of double crosses where the good guy is working for the mob and the bad guy is working for the police. Set in Boston instead of his favorite setting of New York, The Departed features vintage Scorsese: impressive editing, often to carefully chosen pop music and richly coordinated violence . Strong work from Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Jack Nicholson and featuring scene-stealing performances by Alec Baldwin and Best Supporting Actor nominee Mark Wahlberg.


8) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) by Michel Gondry- Jim Carrey gives his best performance in this Charlie Kaufman-scripted film about a man and woman who meet, fall in love, fall out of love, and then go through a procedure to have their memories of one another erased from their minds. There was probably not a more original idea presented in a film in the 2000s than the one displayed here. Told out of order and often with surreal and wild imagery, this is visually arresting and captivating on a cerebral and emotional level. It is often painful to watch the accuracy of the scenes in which we see the disintegration of Carrey and Winslet’s love, for we have all been there before. The film gives us, though, the chance to wonder how life would be if we could erase that one person from our minds forever. How would we adjust? Would we really want to completely lose that person? And if we did, would we find our way back again to that same person? Probing questions from this great, great movie.


7) There Will Be Blood (2007) by Paul Thomas Anderson- An epic American film in every sense of the term. Featuring a commanding performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as oil tycoon Daniel Plainview, There Will Be Blood takes Upton Sinclair’s Oil! and spins it into a Citizen Kane-esque tale of a man who will do anything, from exploiting a son that isn’t his to building a church for a religion he doesn’t believe in, to gain more oil, more wealth, and more power. Anderson keeps the feeling epic throughout. There are long stretches of silence where all we hear is Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood pulsating our ears with a throbbing score recalling the opening tones of Kubrick’s 2001 set to the backdrop of the American West at the turn of the 20th century. This film also reminds us of the open spaces of John Ford’s films. Wealth, questioning God, greed, corruption- this has it all.


6) The Wrestler (2008) by Darren Aronofsky- A simple movie with a straightforward story. Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke) was at the top of professional wrestling in the 1980s. Twenty years later, he works at a supermarket and wrestles only on the weekends in small gyms and local recreational centers. He gets one last chance at stardom by agreeing to wrestle in a nostalgic match against a former opponent. On the surface, The Wrestler is typical movie fare with an underdog achieving one more opportunity to win back what was loss. But there is so much more here. This is a dense, rich tale of sadness, loss, and growing old in today’s America. We marvel at how much Randy and Cassidy, a stripper played by Marisa Tomei whom he tries to have a relationship with, are alike. We ache at how badly Randy screws up his relationship with his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood). We pity the state in which Randy finds himself in terms of his wrestling career, including a devastating scene in which he attends a wrestling autograph show, only to have a few people show up. The other wrestlers in attendance are old, crippled, and near death- and Randy knows he may soon be there too. What an amazing work this is and what a job Rourke does. Perhaps the role of the decade, Rourke plays this as if he knows Randy inside and out, as if he experienced everything that happens to Randy in his own life. This is not acting- it is being.


5) Munich (2005) by Steven Spielberg- Munich is the most adult film Steven Spielberg has ever made. Accustomed to making sentimental films with answers and easy resolutions, Spielberg presents no answers and no hint of a resolution to his film concerning an Israeli hit squad sent to kill the Palestinian terrorists who planned the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre that resulted in the deaths of Israeli athletes. He presents us with both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and asks us to empathize with both sides and see the merits and weaknesses of both. He also does this with the question of how do you fight terrorism? Do you do it with more violence or with negotiations? If you kill those who are tying to kill you, won’t those people just be replaced by other killers and the cycle continue? We are left to decide whether or not we agree with Avner (Eric Bana) or Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush) on the what the correct response to terror should be. In addition to having a powerful message, Munich is a terrific suspense picture with suspenseful action sequences and photography that resembles thrillers from the 1970s. Strong work from Spielberg that should gain luster with age.


4) The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) by Wes Anderson- Why is this so high on the list? Because I cannot think of a more humorous, richly developed story featuring an astounding cast of characters that are all well-rounded and full of depth. Wes Anderson, love him or hate him, has created his own style in film that features his own specific cinematic look, comedy, and characters, and The Royal Tenenbaums is the peak of that creative method. In the film, Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) tries to reconnect with his estranged wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) and his three genius children (Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, and Luke Wilson). Along the way, we meet Paltrow’s researcher husband (Bill Murray), the family accountant and soon to be husband of Etheline (Danny Glover), and a family friend since childhood named Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), who is now an author of Western novels. Like Scorsese, Anderson knows how to use the perfect pop song for the right sequence. Here, the lovely strains of “Hey Jude” waltzes our way through the film’s beginning as Alec Baldwin as the narrator provides us with the film’s introduction. “These Days” by Nico stages a scene where Paltrow and Luke Wilson reunite at a bus station. “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” by Paul Simon rocks out as Royal and his grandchildren, Ari and Uzi, ramble through New York City. Inspired by the writings and characters of Salinger, this is a beautifully melancholy film with lovely pastel colors and a sarcastic, dry wit that underneath has a heart.

3) Million Dollar Baby (2004) by Clint Eastwood- This may be Eastwood’s masterpiece. Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) has been training boxers for a long time- but never a girl. That is, until Maggie Fitzgerald (Hillary Swank) shows up one day into his gym and demands to be trained. Encouraged by Frankie’s friend Scrap (Morgan Freeman), Maggie hounds Frankie until he finally agrees to train her. Oh, what a movie this is. Eastwood, like John Ford before him, knows how to craft uniquely American films about isolated, lonely men who face decisions in their lives that require them to have the courage to face their own guilt and past. Frankie is a troubled man who no longer speaks to his estranged daughter except through letters that she does not read. Along comes Maggie into Frankie’s life and he gets, essentially, the daughter he never had. Maggie’s life is full of perseverance. She overcomes gender discrimination in boxing, she faces down her white trash past and her mooching family, and she works hard for her dream of becoming a great boxer. Scrap, a former boxer who is now blind in one eye, searches to council both Maggie and Frankie on life, while looking for one last chance to show that he still has grit left in him. This is a very Catholic film as well. We watch Frankie face decisions on his faith, life, death, and the Church. And the ending is emotionally devastating but in the end, when we realize the gravity of everything we’ve just seen, we can only sigh at the sadness and, in a way, loveliness of it. This is such a perfect movie. The acting, photography, the music, and the story- it is all incredible. This is my brother’s favorite movie and rightly so. Eastwood’s greatest achievement.


2) No Country For Old Men (2007) by Joel and Ethan Coen- I’ve already posted my review of this film on the website so not much more can be said. This is the best movie the Coens have ever made and is superb on every level. I would like to speak, though, to what has amazed me the most as I watch this movie more and more and that is the performance by Tommy Lee Jones. Jones, his narrow eyes, aged face, and worried looks, epitomizes the hopelessness that his character Ed Tom feels as he investigates the trail of Moss (Josh Brolin) and Chigurh (Javier Bardem). His world is crumbling around him. “It’s all the damn money, Ed Tom. Money and the drugs” a fellow sheriff states. Violence, greed, and acts of crime swarm all around Ed Tom and he cannot understand what is happening to his town, his state, and his country. His feelings are exemplified by the scene with his uncle, where Ed Tom confesses his doubts, and the film’s closing where he reveals his dream about his dead father to his wife. This is rich, complex storytelling that is told in a straightforward manner by the Coens. You see more things and discover more insights each time it is viewed. It is not common that movies get better and better with each viewing. This one does.


1) A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) by Steven Spielberg- Without question, the most misunderstood, misdiagnosed movie that was released in the last ten years. People trashed it when it came out and others could not reconcile the schizophrenic nature of the piece, though appreciated the effort. But some of us got what Spielberg was doing here. The result? A uniquely original cinematic experience unlike any that has ever been made before or since. Long in production by Stanley Kubrick, A.I. was turned over to Spielberg following Kubrick’s death for completion. The film Spielberg delivered was one which married his own directing style with that of Kubrick’s. We are given the sentimental, emotional drive of Spielberg melded together with the cerebral, calculating meticulousness of Kubrick’s work. The end product is a film that is pure Spielberg but with Kubrickian touches that make us feel as if we are watching something done by the 2001 and Eyes Wide Shut director. In A.I., we are given a world where robots are slowly replacing humans. In this world, a robot child named David (Haley Joel Osment) is created to love, have emotions, and responds to the needs of the “parents”, Monica and Henry, to whom he is given. David is soon abandoned by his parents, but has heard the story of Pinocchio and believing the story to be real seeks to find the Blue Fairy so she can turn him into a real boy. As a real boy, Monica, he believes, will love him. Told in a three-act structure, much like 2001, A.I. has haunting imagery and recalls Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., A Clockwork Orange, and elements of The Shining. John Williams gives one of his best musical scores to go with this imagery. What are these images? A Manhattan completely submerged in water, a city featuring tunnels in the shape of a woman’s open mouth, and CGI created robots which look creepily real. A.I. is not an easy film. It asks much of us, to buy into this future world and to ponder the questions it asks. What makes us human? Do you define humanity as the ability to give and receive love? What responsibility do we have to ask moral questions regarding the use of technology? Can you love something that is not in a sense "human" but love it if it looks and acts "human"? All these questions, and more, are here. Essentially, to quote A.O. Scott of The New York Times, this is a film about the end of life and that is what most people miss about the very controversial ending of A.I. Many simply dismissed it as Spielberg tacking on a sentimental ending to a very good film and thereby ruining it. But Scott is right- this is a dark ending, perhaps the darkest of Spielberg’s career. And he owes this darkness, and the ending, in part to Kubrick. Most of Kubrick’s works were initially dismissed upon release by many (2001, Barry Lyndon, Eyes Wide Shut) but have since gained attention as amazing works. Perhaps, one day, A.I. will join that club and finally get the credit it most surely deserves.

Retro-Review: No Country For Old Men

Note: This review was written by me before the 2008 Oscars for the website "The Filmphile".


Coming off Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, it seemed as if Joel and Ethan Coen had become victims of their own filmmaking sensibilities and style. Both films, while entertaining in their own right and displaying typical Coen hilarity, displayed a feeling of familiarity. The quickly-paced, cleverly-witted dialogue and outlandish comedic characters which had inhabited Coen comedies from Raising Arizona to O Brother, Where Art Thou? were present in each picture and succeeded in their respective roles. But while Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers were enjoyable films, they certainly did not rank among the greats of the Coen canon. There was a feeling emitting from these films which seemed to scream “This has been done before.” The Coens most certainly still had the ability to make compelling tales featuring their warped spin on humanity. But where were these films and why weren’t the Coens making them? These guys, after all, were the filmmaking duo behind such dramatic marvels as Fargo, Miller’s Crossing, and The Man Who Wasn’t There. Surely they had more intense dramatic yarns with which to enthrall unsuspecting audiences. With the release of No Country For Old Men, the brothers’ first film in three years, such grievances have been diminished with a vengeance. Not only is their adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel an almost unanimous darling of film critics, it has also been nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor and Best Director and is the favorite to win the coveted top prize of Best Picture of the year.
Not counting the Odyssey-inspired O Brother, No Country For Old Men is the first film by the Coens to be adapted from an existing published work. Perhaps the use of an already created story as the basis for their new film gave the Coens the needed creative energy to mold a fresh cinematic narrative. Working to adapt a novel into a screenplay instead of creating an original script definitely seemed to present them with the tools necessary to get out of the creative stalemate which plagued their two previous films. And anyone who has both read the book and seen the movie will tell you that the Coens have done one of the best adaptations of a novel into a film in recent memory. Almost following the book completely in terms of the use of character dialogue and structure, the film is an adaptive triumph. But the real triumph here is how much the Coens managed to leave their own unique filmmaking fingerprints all over the picture’s characters, dialogue, and story. That story is the heart of what makes No Country prevail as a film.
The story concerns three supporting male characters and their interactions with one another in Texas in the year 1980. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), while hunting one day on the Texas plains, discovers a drug deal gone sour as he comes across a slew of destroyed vehicles which contain murdered inhabitants. Discovering a briefcase filled with money at the scene, Llewelyn boldly takes the lucrative satchel and returns home to his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) before going on the run with the money. Little does he know that the very incantation of evil is lurking across Texas carrying with him a blank stare and a sinister air tank. This killer with his own code of ethics is Anton Chigurh and it becomes his mission to recapture the money and kill Llewelyn. Portrayed with ominous calm by the superb Javier Bardem, Chigurh treks across Texas, killing all who get in his way of finding Llewelyn. While the chase of Moss and Chigurh leaps to monumental proportions, sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) emerges as the law enforcement presence trying to find Llewelyn before he meets the fate of Chigurh’s previous victims.
This story allows the actors in the film to create incredible performances and the Coens to execute tense sequences which strain the audience’s nerves. Case in point is the scene in which Bardem’s Chigurh stops at a service station and speaks with the station’s attendant. At this point, we know that Chigurh is a psychopathic killer, as he has already choked a policeman to death with a pair of handcuffs and used his cow-disposing air tank (which swiftly shoots out a steel cylinder into the head of his victims) on unsuspecting victims. Given this, as Chigurh continues to badger the poor attendant, we begin to suspect that he will murder this man for no reason other than to satisfy some sick desire deep within himself. Then, the Coens throw us with Chigurh’s fate-deciding coin toss which the attendant correctly calls completely unaware (but very aware to us) that his call has spared his life. It is a horribly tense moment and one which no doubt found many a person sweating bullets of fear. This is also the scene which defines Javier Bardem’s amazing, nominated performance. His Chigurh is one of the creepiest, most terrifying representations of evil to inhabit a movie in years and ranks as one of the best villains in movie history. With his now-famous haircut, dead-eyed stare, and calm voice, Bardem creates Chigurh as a man who seems to roam the earth only to fulfill his sadistic desire to take life away from others. It is no accident that we never really here who has hired Chigurh to track the missing money and in a way it does not really matter. The money is merely a MacGuffin in the story, the device which gives Chigurh a reason to track Moss down and kill him. He has no real desire to find the money- he just wants blood.
It is this sick desire of Chigurh, and the death that he leaves in his path, which provides No Country For Old Men with the crux of its message. Ed Tom, in a understated, subdued performance by Jones, is a man who has been around Texas for a long time and has been a policeman for even longer. Faced with investigating the terror of the mysterious Chigurh and finding the missing Moss, he represents a force of good coming to grips with the horror which has come to inhabit the country he has for so long protected. He symbolizes an older generation facing the fact that the modern world is changing and it is not changing for the better. These are not pleasant thoughts and the Coens do not sugarcoat their message. We feel for Ed Tom. We see the anguish, fear, and apprehension on his face as he muddles over these very thoughts in his mind and with others. He is a good man doing good deeds who is trapped in a deteriorating hell hole. Much credit must be given to Jones who gives Ed Tom the vulnerability and honesty that few other actors could contribute to the character.
As far as the other performances go, Josh Brolin is magnificent as Moss, as is Kelly Macdonald as his wife. Although Bardem received the acting nomination, the truth is that Brolin, Jones, and Macdonald all could have been nominated for the film. They are all that good. But the main stars of this film are the Coens and they have succeeded admirably with No Country. For instance, they have triumphed in their accuracy in adapting the novel while simultaneously imprinting their own style onto the film. With the movie, the Coens have given a face to McCarthy’s characters and a beautiful visual representation of the book’s happenings which fits nicely alongside their work in previous films. The movie is often times darkly humorous and the characters speak with a regional vernacular which has been a part of Coen films like O Brother, Raising Arizona, and Fargo. But while those films rely heavily on dialogue, No Country is noticeably a quiet film. Spans of time go by in which no dialogue is spoken and music is obviously not a factor here. It is a much more stoic piece than previous Coen films, its closest relative in this department perhaps being the melancholy and subdued The Man Who Wasn’t There. The film also features breathtaking cinematography by longtime collaborator Roger Deakins. His framing of the desolate Texas landscape elicits images of his masterful work in Fargo. Here, instead of photographing the frigid, white setting of Minnesota, he offers us the brown, dreary, and sometimes empty scenery of Texas. In both Fargo and No Country for Old Men, those specific settings allow for the development of tales concerning murder, greed, and loss. But Fargo concludes rather optimistically, ending with the realization that Frances McDormand’s character will be having a child soon and thus bringing some sort of pure and innocent good into a corrupt world. The same cannot be said of the already love-it or don’t-understand-it-and-think-its-stupid ending of No Country. Ed Tom’s disclosure of his dream to his wife, preceded by the escape of the wounded Chigurh, leaves us shaken and fearful for Ed Tom and his fellow generational compatriots who must face the changing, though not for the better, modern world.
The notion of calling a movie “perfect” is not something to be taken lightly. There have been only a few of what I would call “perfect” films which I have seen in this decade. I would certainly file No Country For Old Men into that category. Perhaps their greatest achievement, the Coen brothers have crafted a masterpiece worthy of the highest praise the Academy can offer and the best compliment this reviewer can give. It is the best movie of 2007.



Two years later after this review, I find myself liking the film even more. A note must be made about the scene in the film in which Ed Tom visits his uncle and reveals his doubts on God and his view on how his life, and the world, is tiring him- why he is over-matched. This is one of the greatest scenes out of the last ten years of American movies. No Country For Old Men ranks as the #2 best American movie that I saw during the last decade.

Nostalgic "Wolfman" thrills

From 1931 to 1948, Universal Studios ushered in a series of iconic films which introduced the definitive pop culture images of classic monster characters like Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and The Mummy. Starring horror legends such as Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney, Jr. and made by directors like Tod Browning and James Whale, these movies, including Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), scared the daylights out of movie-going audiences of the time and forever made men like Lugosi, Karloff, and Chaney film icons. Universal had a great product and knew exactly how to make these films. These were B-movies made for audiences to simply enjoy watching. They had foggy nights, creepy villains, mobs of angry villagers, gothic castles, laboratories of buzzing electrical equipment, and state of the art make-up of the time cloaking leads like Chaney or Karloff in the shells of their monster personas. These traits have been acknowledged and honored by director Joe Johnston and actor Benicio Del Toro in the remake of, in the opinion of this author, the best movie of the Universal horror cycle, The Wolfman.
The Wolfman uses the same character names and basic story as the original 1941 film but does deviate on the specifics. The movie opens as stage actor Lawrence Talbot (Del Toro, inheriting the role from Lon Chaney, Jr.) returns to his father’s estate in Victorian-era England to investigate the gruesome murder of his brother. Summoned to the Talbot homestead by his brother’s dead fiancé, Gwen Conliffe, a devastatingly beautiful Emily Blunt, Talbot reconnects with his estranged father, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins taking over for Claude Rains’ original performance), and through investigating with local villagers and questioning a band of traveling gypsies, learns that his brother’s body was torn to pieces by a werewolf that is stalking the countryside. Soon Lawrence himself falls victim to the bite of the werewolf and begins to turn into one once the full moon rises. And when he does, he slashes and claws his way through numerous victims and splatters the screen with gory violence.
What makes this version of The Wolfman different from its predecessor is that the main struggle of Lawrence Talbot in the original film was that he could not convince anyone that he was turning into a wolf and committing murder. He spends the whole film in torment because no one will believe him when he confesses to his awful crimes. Other characters, like his father, believe that Talbot is mentally disturbed. In the new version, every knows that Lawrence Talbot is a werewolf and that he is murdering innocent victims. Because of this, the new version lacks the tension and some of the weight of the original. Here, Talbot spends the film not trying to persuade those around him that he is a werewolf but fleeing angry villagers and a London inspector (The Matrix’s Hugo Weaving) who are trying to contain and kill him.
This qualm involving the story is a minor quibble in what is overall a very entertaining throwback to Universal’s classics. Fans of the original should smile in geeky delight at the little nods to the original, like the inclusion of original screenwriter Curt Siodmak’s werewolf poem (“Even a man who is pure in heart/And says his prayers by night/ May become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms/ And the autumn moon is bright”), the images of eerie castles and fog-filled forests, and the presence of props from the original film, like a silver-headed cane reminiscent of the one used by Chaney in the original.
Del Toro, Hopkins, and Blunt play it straight here and take the material seriously, avoiding the temptation of making this an exercise in campy acting. Del Toro especially does a noble job honoring Chaney’s original performance. Like Chaney, we can see the anguish and despair on the face of Del Toro’s Talbot. His Talbot is a man who does not want the curse placed upon him and labors to isolate himself from those he loves. In this case, that person is Emily Blunt’s Gwen. The two fall in love as the movie progresses and it is easy to see why Talbot does. Blunt has classic Hollywood beauty that recalls Ingrid Bergman and she plays the love interest and protector of Lawrence with the terrible realization that if she really loves Talbot, she may have to rid him of his curse by destroying him.
The Wolfman contains sequences of CGI that critics like Roger Ebert have criticized for lacking in believability with regards to the way the creature moves, for example, through the rooftops of London once he escapes from a mental hospital. Ebert complains that the werewolf moves too quickly and too much like a cartoon. This is valid criticism but is easily overlooked because one would find it difficult to say that a mythical creature like a werewolf, which does not exist, moves too fast in a movie. The make-up by Rick Baker is expertly done and is more expressive and terrifying than the original make- up done by make up artist Jack Pierce (the man you can thank for the bolts-on-the-neck look of Frankenstein’s monster). This is a gory movie and is very violent, but like Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, the violence is not too realistic and perhaps is one of the campiest elements about the whole movie.
Joe Johnston has made a film that honors the old Universal films and stakes its own claim in today’s modern horror genre. It is refreshing to see a film that is set in the 19th century, embraces that atmosphere of castles and fog, and not be about teenage vampires waxing about love. Though the original ultimately stands on a mantle above it, The Wolfman thrills. You do not see B-movies made much with A-list actors and state of the art effects. Only once in a full moon.

Grade: B

Scorsese has fun with Hitchcock, noir on "Shutter Island"

Martin Scorsese knows film history. Watch any interview with him or read any books or articles which quote him and you learn that he not only knows, almost obsessively, about the movies, he lives and breathes them. There has probably not been a more staunch supporter of film preservation within Hollywood than Scorsese. He will pop up on Turner Classic Movies preaching on the dangers of pan and scan conversion of widescreen films to television or appear on an American Film Institute specials offering praise towards giant filmmakers like John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, and the Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock. And it is Hitchcock whom Scorsese acknowledges and evokes with his newest film, Shutter Island.
Shutter Island opens on the choppy waves of New England as federal marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, sail towards the ominous island of the film's title. The image of the large ferry sailing towards a place of mystery, cloaked in fog reminds us of the crew that sails towards the island at the beginning of the classic King Kong. But monsters of a different kind await on the island, for it is home to a mental institution which houses violent, criminally insane individuals. Daniels and Aule have been ordered to the facility to investigate the disappearance of one of the institution's patients. Ran by the pipe-smoking, level-headed Dr. John Cawley, played by Ben Kingsley, the institution appears to be hiding a dark, sinister secret too chilling for Daniels or Aule to understand. Notions of experimental surgeries, possibly performed by ex-Nazis, begin to haunt Teddy, as does the image of his dead wife (a gorgeously haunting Michelle Williams, here seen only in flashbacks). Teddy, too, has his own secrets as we learn that he helped liberate a concentration camp as a soldier during World War II and was witness to the atrocities of the Nazis. Soon, Teddy plunges deep within the twisting and winding corridors of the island searching for the truth of the missing person he has been sent to find, while simultaneously wandering through the mazes of own mind in a search of the median between sanity and insanity.
Scorsese is purely having fun with Shutter Island. As soon as Teddy and Chuck arrive on the island and begin their drive to the institution, we are greeted with a bombastic, deadly score that conjures Bernard Herrmann's greatest efforts with Alfred Hitchcock. The score does a fantastic job of illustrating the eerie feeling that the island itself is emitting and it sets the tone for the picture the same way Herrmann's scores for Psycho and Vertigo did. We do not hear scores this over-the-top or pronounced today- but it would fit in nicely with, say, film noir and Hitchcock of the 40s and 50s.
As well, Scorsese has an exacting feel for the film noir genre and displays it effectively. DiCaprio and Ruffalo investigate the island full private-eye style with a cigarette hanging from their lips and a fedora on their heads- all the while a foggy atmosphere and stormy weather, reflecting the situations the find at the institution, literally engulfs them. This represents some of the stylistic basics of film noir and it's great to see Scorsese use those traits here.
Perhaps Vertigo is the Hitchcock film that Shutter Island pays tribute to the most. Much must be said of Leonardo DiCaprio's obsessive, strenuous performance. As James Stewart epitomized the everyman for Hitchcock, so has DiCaprio for Scorsese. The two have made this, their fourth movie together, after success in establishing a partnership on Gangs of New York, The Aviator, and The Departed. Here, DiCaprio is at his best. Like Stewart in Vertigo, he is a man haunted with the uncontrollable desire to know the truth about the case he has been sent to investigate. Both men are haunted by the deaths of an attractive blond female who now linger in their memories- and not for the better. These memories cause catastrophic damage to the psyche of both men. Teddy's fate at the end of this film could probably have been the same fate of Scottie once he left the bell tower following the death of Kim Novak's Judy at the end of Vertigo. DiCaprio portrays loss, obsession, and causes us to feel his paranoia as he becomes more and more involved in the island's startling secrets. This is an extremely strong performance and DiCaprio has once again proven, along with Revolutionary Road, that he is quickly becoming one of America's leading actors.
Ultimately, this is Scorsese having a good time. He is not trying to hammer home a message to his audience or convey a heavy-handed theme. Because of this, it does not have the weight of Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation of Christ, or Goodfellas. However, this is entertaining as hell and falls on the same path as Scorsese's own Cape Fear remake in the horror/ suspense nature of it. The ending is one which may divide audiences because it essentially asks them to buy into a 180 degree turn. With modern audiences, this can be sometimes hard to do and some may find it disappointing, campy, and completely deceptive. But those movie goers will be missing the point. Shutter Island is genre story-telling by a master filmmaker who is conscious of where his film has come from and has the cinematic tools from film's history to tell it.

GRADE: A-